


Weeping Wisteria: Side B

by tsuwundere



Series: Weeping Wisteria (Hanahaki AU) [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, It gets better I promise, M/M, POV Saihara Shuichi, apologies for this upload order, but only marginally lmfao, it's Ouma not Oma, part of a two-part series, there's the smallest bit of fluff if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 00:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30080877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsuwundere/pseuds/tsuwundere
Summary: Shuichi finds that he never could deduce the extent of the mastermind’s cruelty.Wherever Kokichi goes, he leaves behind pretty purple petals and a suffocatingly sweet scent in the air.If he kills Shuichi, Kokichi tells him tearfully, he’ll be cured.Shuichi doesn’t blame Kokichi for complying.
Relationships: Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi
Series: Weeping Wisteria (Hanahaki AU) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2208354
Comments: 11
Kudos: 55





	Weeping Wisteria: Side B

**Author's Note:**

> content warning for attempted suicide

Of his classmates, Kokichi unsettled Shuichi the most.

Oftentimes, Shuichi finds himself lying awake at night. And oftentimes, it feels like the shadows in his peripheral vision come alive and dart about, only to still when he fearfully glances towards them.

Kokichi was something like that. You couldn’t take your eyes off him for even a second, unless you wanted to fall victim to his mischief.

“I’m Kokichi Ouma, the Ultimate Supreme Leader!” Had been his impish introduction. He’d thrown his hands in the air and grinned - wide, wider than anyone would think to in their situation, wider than anyone else Shuichi had met that day.

Presented with Rantaro’s dead body not long after, Kokichi seemed to look at Shuichi with thinly veiled disgust. He smiled at him pleasantly during the investigation, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

Shuichi looks away quickly. He thinks he understands the expression - it’s judgment.

_How are you so comfortable with corpses? It’s weird. Detective or not, necessary or not, it’ll never not be weird to prod at your classmate’s dead body like that._

Shuichi understands, because he sort of feels the same way about it. It’s really not like he wanted to end up where he was - and he means that in more ways than one - it just _happened_.

Kokichi is not often so easily readable. He seems to be in complete control of it, in fact.

Shuichi has to blink back his tears to notice it, but it was certainly there. A knowing glint in Kokichi’s eyes as suspicion is first directed towards the detective. He then opens his mouth and drops another carefully calculated remark, and Shuichi sees Kaede’s trembling body jerk as though Kokichi physically had her limbs attached to strings.

He doesn’t know what any of his observations on Kokichi really mean, but he knows it frightens him all the same. Shuichi was the detective between them, but it certainly seemed like Kokichi had everything figured out far earlier and knew exactly what to say to get the mystery to roll over on its stomach.

And that was, in short, what disturbed Shuichi the most about his mysterious purple-haired classmate - his apparent ability to see through everyone and everything, while remaining an enigma himself.

As if that wasn’t enough, Kokichi presented himself with a _second_ air of mystery beginning around the time of Kirumi’s execution.

Shuichi freezes upon entering the dorms that night. Kokichi was halfway up the stairs. He glances over his shoulder, smiles - something that surprises Shuichi, considering Maki had been choking him less than an hour ago - and waves with his fingers, before turning back and continuing up the steps.

A purple petal slipped out of his sleeve as he did so. He didn’t seem to notice. It resembles the wisteria in the courtyard, so Shuichi thinks nothing of it. He slips into his own room beyond the staircase, desperate for any semblance of rest after having lost two more of his friends.

Kokichi’s behaviour is standard for the next few days. He earns himself a few threats from Kiyo, whines about it as though he didn’t deserve it, and hides behind Shuichi begging him to protect him and his nerves from being torn out.

It was around that point in time when Shuichi noticed a detail in Kokichi’s typical behaviour. He provokes Kaito and Maki, he mocks Miu and Gonta and he puts his hands all over the things in Kiyo’s lab without permission - all while remaining relatively gentle with Shuichi himself.

Shuichi was almost becoming strangely accustomed to the sensation of Kokichi clinging to his left arm as they poked around the new areas that had opened up on campus, as uncomfortable as he had found it initially.

Actually, in thinking about it - it’s not that he’d even been given the chance to feel uncomfortable about Kokichi’s tendency to invade his personal space in the first place. He’d known that since the incident in Gonta’s lab.

That was all beside the point, though. With his growing concern for Angie’s strange behaviour and Kaito’s apparent declining health, Shuichi forgets to be worried about Kokichi for the next few days.

* * *

Shuichi loses two more people before Kokichi bothers him again.

Shuichi’s talent was strictly in detective work - he was not musically gifted by any degree whatsoever. Practicing his lines for the seance was necessary, but not at all a fun experience for him.

The same seemed to go for the self-proclaimed supreme leader, sat cross-legged on the floor across the room from the detective. Kokichi opens his mouth, gently sings one or two lines in a shaky, breathy falsetto, sighs and stops. He cycles those actions three and a half times before he notices Shuichi’s gaze on him. He pulls a face, some kind of half-grimace with a roll of the eyes that expressed something along the lines of “ _Why do we have to do this?”_ which Shuichi returns with his own sympathetic expression.

The pair laugh lightly from their respective positions across the room.

That had been several minutes before Tenko was killed.

The investigation was typical - he’d just collected various pieces of evidence that he had no real idea how to string together.

Shuichi dwells on that thought, and thinks about just how often it was that Kokichi would say something in the trials that followed - whether it was deliberate or not was impossible to discern - that would always end up pushing Shuichi in the right direction.

His methods were really shrouded in mystery impossible for even the Ultimate Detective to unpick, but Shuichi could definitely say, without a doubt, that they couldn’t have come this far without the purple-haired prankster.

It’s a warm thought, and Shuichi steps out of the seance room smiling.

His face falls quickly upon doing so, though.

There laid the very boy he’d just been thinking about, face-down in a pool of his own pink blood at his forehead.

Shuichi pales. A _third_ case? Did Shuichi have a _serial killer_ on his hands? How many more investigations was Shuichi going to have to endure?

But more importantly… Kokichi...

“It’s a lie!” Said boy proclaims a moment afterwards, and Shuichi feels the tips of his ears become red-hot.

“Did I getcha? Were you about to scream and cry in terror?” Kokichi was now sitting on his heels, his expression far too amused for the situation at hand.

“What are you _doing_?” Shuichi says, with no attempt to mask the irritation in his voice.

Of course he was irritated. He’d been _worried_ for a second there.

“If this is a prank, it’s not very funny,”

The smile on Kokichi’s face doesn’t waver. He just blinks in Shuichi’s general direction, seeming to look somewhere beyond.

His eyes focus again on Shuichi. “Oh! Sorry, did you… say something? I’m a little dizzy from the blood loss. Yeah, this is real blood,”

Kokichi shakily stands up, supporting himself against the wall.

“I asked what you were doing,” Shuichi repeats himself, faltering on the last syllable as Kokichi shifts and Shuichi catches a glimpse of the grotesque bloodstain he’d left on the wall.

“I-I was checking those two other rooms,” Kokichi begins to explain slowly, seeming to struggle for breath. Alarmingly, a lilac petal falls from his scarf right then. He hadn’t been near the courtyard for hours. “When I… I stepped through the floorboard.”

He stops to cough violently into his hands.

“If you’re going to lose consciousness, do it after you tell us everything,” Maki says from behind Shuichi.

He drags his sleeve across his mouth before he speaks, and leaves a stripe of pink on it. Shuichi’s eyes must have been deteriorating, because it looked as though it had come from his mouth and not the running wound on his forehead.

“Ahaha… Right,” he rasps, and Shuichi doesn’t register anything else he says, his attention grimly fixed on yet _another_ light purple petal stuck to the blood on the end of his sleeve.

The bell rings to summon the students to the trial grounds soon afterwards.

Kokichi weakly goes ahead before them. Only on Shuichi’s way out soon afterwards does he notice the pungent sweet smell of flowers and blood Kokichi had left in his wake.

It was strange - _really_ strange, since Kaito seemed to be sick too.

Shuichi doesn’t have the chance to dwell on it. He exposes Kiyo for his crimes (with a lot of guidance from Kokichi, as usual), and sends him to his death.

The next time he gets to think about it is a few mornings later.

Kokichi greets him on his way down from his dorm room. It’s a Kokichi-typical greeting - a voice entirely too bright and a smile entirely too wide.

Shuichi wants to appreciate it. Energy like that wasn’t easy to find in their environment.

But he can’t.

Stood there, in front of Shuichi with smiling eyes, was a classmate that looked close to death.

He’s seen it enough times to tell by this point. He’d been like that yesterday, and the day before, too.

Kokichi barely resembled the boy who had been chasing Keebo around in a classroom when Shuichi first met him, stopping only to introduce himself as the Ultimate Supreme Leader.

Something was happening to him. It didn’t take a detective to figure that much out.

“You look sort of pale,” Shuichi comments, eyeing Kokichi’s firm grip on the handrail.

“Hmm? Isn’t that just your imagination?”

Kokichi tilts his head under the harsh blue light overhead, and it does him no favours. The shadows casted by his hair shift, revealing dark circles under his eyes that seemed to match his hair in colour.

“Have you been sleeping well?” Shuichi continues, figuring already that Kokichi wouldn’t talk about something bothering him without prompting.

“Well, no. Have you? It’s strange if you have, Shuichi. Do you know where we are right now?”

He’s changing the subject.

“I won’t force you to talk to me, and I know you don’t really like this kind of talk but I think you could do with hearing it anyway…” Shuichi clears his throat. He’s not good at this kind of conversation either.

“Anyone would struggle in a place like this. If you’re worried about anything, you can let me know… Okay? I’ll do my best to help.”

Kokichi _sways_ \- dangerously, as though he could’ve fallen over any moment, but quickly stabilises himself. It doesn’t do anything to help Shuichi’s concern.

He let out a quiet, breathless laugh. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Of course I do. Why would you think that?”

There’s some silence after that. Kokichi was smiling ever so slightly. Shuichi knows that expression.

It’s natural to need to search for certain words when you’ve never used them before. Words that you use when you cry, words that beg for help, words that can express even half the world of pain you’re in - Shuichi is familiar with that feeling, this heavy silence, and that expression on Kokichi right at that moment.

Shuichi understands, and waits.

Finally, Kokichi opens his mouth.

Another voice speaks.

“What’s the hold up, bro? I’ve been waiting out here for so long.” Kaito’s appearance is accompanied by the sound of the doors sliding open.

He takes one look at Kokichi and grimaces. “Oh, not this guy. Is he up to some weird shit again?”

Kokichi’s mouth snaps shut.

He smiles passively again, but it communicates something different this time.

“Ah, wait-- Kokichi, aren’t you going to eat?” Shuichi manages to call out as Kaito whisks him away to the door. Kokichi had begun back up the stairs again.

“Later,” he returns almost inaudibly, not looking back when his dorm room door shuts behind him.

A petal falls from the handrail he’d been leaning on.

When Kokichi shows up in the dining hall later, he doesn’t eat.

Not food, anyway. He does, however, at least taste Kaito’s fist.

“The next blackened? Yeah, sure. If that’d help me win, I’d do it.” Kokichi had said.

“Are you serious?” Shuichi feels like it’s an unnecessary question, but he asks anyway. Kokichi was never serious, about _anything_ , but it’s not like he’d been acting like himself as of late either.

“Of course I am!” He declares.

It wasn’t a verbal answer Shuichi was looking for. When the purple-haired boy looks towards him with that typical mischievous twinkle in his eye, Shuichi figures he doesn’t have to worry.

Kaito doesn’t see the same thing.

Shuichi flinches when Kaito lands the punch. He knows how much those hurt. And Kokichi was a lot smaller than he was, and obviously really sick.

Kokichi is completely limp in Kaito’s grip when he readies a second punch, aside from where he had his hand glued over his mouth. Shuichi had been rooted to the spot in that moment, so he’s endlessly grateful for Keebo when he gets through to the astronaut.

Kokichi stays on the ground when Kaito leaves him there.

Kaito spits something about Kokichi’s ‘fucking lies’ and returns to the crowd around Gonta.

The conversation continues without Kokichi. Shuichi considers going over to stay by his side, but Kokichi had stood up on shaky legs and staggered away silently before he could make up his mind.

Shuichi finds him in the dining room again later that day.

He’s playing that knife game that Shuichi vaguely remembers from his time outside. He was doing it really slowly, yet all his fingers were bleeding.

Shuichi walks in, intending to intervene.

“What are you doing here all by yourself?” Shuichi asks, seating himself by his classmate. Upon closer inspection, he notices that Kokichi’s hands won’t stop shaking - neither the one wielding the knife, nor the one flat, palm-down on the table in front of him.

It was times like this that the floors and walls all around Shuichi seemed to ooze with a sense of loss. The dining room never had such few people in it, and Kokichi wasn’t often alone either - he’d find _someone_ to bother every day.

So Shuichi really felt like he had just stepped into the very picture of loneliness.

Kokichi had a thousand-yard stare in the direction of his flat hand when he shrugged. “Thinking.”

“About?”

“Stuff.”

Shuichi should’ve figured that was going to be no use.

“Could you tell me about it? It seems like it’s really bothering you.” He prompts more directly.

Kokichi sighs, puts down the knife, and finally looks at Shuichi. His eyes are weighted with a tired sadness that it doesn’t seem he had the energy to hide anymore.

“Would you believe me? I hardly believe any of it myself,”

“Of course,” Shuichi says softly.

“There’s wisteria growing in my lungs,” Kokichi declares.

_That’s not possible_ , is Shuichi’s first thought. He remembers he had literally just promised to believe him, and tries to discard the thought.

(He can’t. It’s physically impossible for flowers to grow in human lungs, right?)

“And Miu is trying to kill me,” he adds after a moment.

Shuichi chooses to address that first. “I won’t let that happen. Can you tell me more? You don’t have to deal with this by yourself, Kokichi. Nobody else has to d--”

Kokichi ignores him.

“And I like you.” He finishes.

“Oh-- Um, Kokichi, one at a time?”

“It’s no use, there’s already answers to everything and I know them all,” Kokichi says, leaning forwards onto the table and resting his cheek on his forearm.

“Um, Kokichi? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what else to tell you, Detective,” Kokichi snaps all of a sudden, sitting up again. “I’ve told you everything already. I’m fucked. Totally fucked.”

“Kokichi, let’s calm down--”

“It’s no use. I was set up to die. Shuichi, it’s no use,”

Kokichi is suddenly in hysterics, and Shuichi had no idea what to do. It wasn’t rocket science that an environment like this could drive someone insane and he’d even considered the possibility of it happening to himself before, but Kokichi had been fine literally several hours ago!

Well, not _fine_ in every sense of the word, but not like this… Shuichi felt himself begin to panic.

“It’s no use,” he repeats again. “Shuichi, what do I do? The only other thing I can do is kill mys--”

Kokichi pauses, as though he’d had an epiphany.

He flips the blade in his hands around, readying the tip at his throat.

“K-Kokichi?! Kokichi, that’s enough - stop!” Shuichi stands up, knocking his seat over in the process. He desperately grabs the hilt and wrestles it some distance away from Kokichi’s face, but Kokichi doesn’t let go.

“Shuichi, get the fuck off of me,” he growls.

“No way! You can’t kill yourself, Kokichi! There has to be something else we can do - you can’t quit!”

Kokichi scoffs. “Something else? What would you know?!”

It resonates with Shuichi differently than Kokichi probably intended. Tears rush to Shuichi’s eyes so quickly that it’s painful.

“A lot more than you!” He cries back.

Kokichi stills for a second. Shuichi realises today had been the first time he’d seen Kokichi actually frown.

Kokichi’s grip loosens all of a sudden, but he doesn’t let go.

It catches Shuichi off-guard and he stumbles, and Kokichi exploits the opening.

He drives the knife directly into Shuichi’s gut.

Shuichi’s body stutters. He doesn’t feel the pain immediately, but when he does, he feels it all at once.

Kokichi pulls it out again, and Shuichi falls forward. He wasn’t expecting it, but Kokichi catches him.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he breathes, eyes wide with panic. “I’m so sorry.”

Shuichi resists when Kokichi cradles him.

“Wh-What are you doing?” Shuichi winces. It’s painful to talk.

“You’ll get blood on you,” He continues slowly. “E-Evidence…”

“Never mind that…” Kokichi’s tears fall from his eyes onto Shuichi’s face. “I-I should’ve-- I wanted to tell you when you asked but it’s so hopeless, Shuichi, I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” he says between hiccups.

Shuichi wants to protest that, but figures he has no right.

“They told me my fate was sealed, Shuichi - I was spoilt for choice on ways to fucking die. Either to Miu, or Kaito, or to _you_ ,”

“M-Me?”

“This bullshit in my lungs,” Kokichi rasps. “It started because I fell for you. It was a motive. They’d cure me if I killed you, or I’d die and you’d be executed in the trial that followed. I’m so sorry,”

...It’s cruel, far too cruel. The mastermind had really sunk their teeth deep into Kokichi’s flesh.

“It’s not your fault,”

Every word is another wave of pain through his body, but he forces himself to keep talking. For Kokichi’s sake.

“You did well. I’m sorry you had to endure this alone for so long, because of me,”

Kokichi shakes his head frantically, holding Shuichi’s already-lifeless body tighter. His skin is cold. He must have suffered a lot.

As he leaned into Kokichi’s embrace with what was left of his strength, Shuichi thought about their first meeting.

About how he’d figured that if he were to be killed by anyone, it’d probably be this playful yet sinister classmate of his.

About how he could never have foreseen that the circumstances of that murder would be like _this_.

Shuichi thought he’d die so much angrier. He thought he’d go down fighting. He thought he’d hate his murderer. Resent them. Curse them.

Here he was, _pitying_ them instead, as they cried into Shuichi’s blood-soaked clothes.

“Good lord, we’ll need to add to the OST for this.” Monokuma’s grating voice sounded from somewhere. Never before had Shuichi wanted to crush something beneath his heel before more than Monokuma in that moment.

“Monokuma.” Shuichi calls.

“Shuichi.” Monokuma returns.

“I’m going to die.” He says straightforwardly. “Cure Kokichi. Now, in front of me.”

“...Puhuhuhu…”

Shuichi’s vision was already beginning to blur, and the sound of that annoying laughter was only making it harder to stay afloat.

“Puhuhuhuhuhu! Did you actually believe me? To put it in your own words, you purple gremlin - it was a lie! It was all a lie!”

“Stop it,” Shuichi warns, his voice low. “I’m the one talking to you. You’ll address me, not him.”

“Ohhh, this is romantic! Okay, I’ll play along. The damage to Kokichi Ouma’s lungs are permanent. There’s no point in him going to trial anyway, our detective is mortally wounded and will be dead by then. There’s nobody else to carry the trial. He’ll just win.”

Kokichi begins to cough - _hard_ , alarmingly hard, and Monokuma just shrugs.

“And that’s boring. It’ll tug at more heartstrings if you both die here, together! And we can just carry on the killing game with what’s left of you bastards. We’re short on budget this season too, so we can’t afford a _Kokichi Ouma: Living With the Consequences of Killing a Loved One for Survival_ spin off either, and I have a feeling you’d fight that and it’d be no fun anyway. So! Sayonara!”

“W-Wait!” Shuichi forgets he has a gaping wound in his torso and twists his body towards a fleeing Monokuma, prompting him to spit up blood onto the floor.

His vision slips in and out of focus at the sight of bright pink against white, and it gets no better when he sees the same contrast on Kokichi’s clothes.

Shuichi couldn’t tell if that was his own blood or Kokichi’s, since the latter had begun to cough up blood and fully-formed flowers.

He shouldn't have doubted him.

“By the way,” Monokuma says from somewhere outside of Shuichi’s scope of vision. “What you were told about it being impossible for Shuichi to return your feelings and cure your illness peacefully was also a lie. Aaaaand you could have survived every other upcoming death trap peacefully, too.”

Shuichi doesn’t know what Monokuma is talking about, but he sees Kokichi’s face crumple.

That was the last thing he saw clearly, losing the ability to focus his eyes soon afterwards.

Monokuma snorts. “That’s it! That’s the face we needed for the thumbnail! Keep up the good work, you little shits!”

Shuichi vaguely registers the sound of the door slamming shut, and Kokichi letting out a ragged breath.

It’s quiet. At least, Shuichi thinks it is. It’s hard to tell over the brutal ringing in his ears.

“Ah, Shuichi, I don’t know what to believe,”

It’s ironic.

“...I don’t wanna die,” he continues a moment later.

“Don’t think about it,” Shuichi says in an attempt to soothe the other. His voice comes out far too strained.

“Ah, my eyes--” Kokichi lets go of Shuichi to rub at them frantically. He was losing his vision too.

“Kokichi, lie down. Here, next to me.”

Shuichi had given up on trying to distinguish the blur of colour in his vision now, but he thinks Kokichi complied.

He confirms it by reaching out a hand and finding Kokichi’s.

“I should have figured,” Kokichi could only whisper now. He chokes before he finishes.

“I killed you for no reason. I’m so sorry,”

Shuichi wants to answer. Wants to tell him that’s not true, and that he’d spared him from one of Monokuma’s inhumane executions.

But he can feel the blood pooling in his lungs, and any attempt to open his mouth was definitely going to make him choke.

He moves his thumb over the skin on the back of Kokichi’s hand in response instead. He doesn’t feel so cold anymore all of a sudden.

Kokichi seems to go quiet afterwards. Was he unconscious? Dead? Or had the ringing in Shuichi’s ears gotten worse?

He tries to feel for the pulse in Kokichi’s wrist. He figures it might look dumb to anyone watching - the pair of them had mere seconds left, it didn’t matter if it were two or thirty.

But Shuichi wanted to make sure Kokichi died first.

Shuichi wouldn’t let Monokuma soil Kokichi’s name with the blackened status.

Shuichi would take it instead.

When he can’t find any semblance of a pulse, he gives in to the unconsciousness clawing at him.

He’s satisfied.

Accompanying a desperately lonely classmate to the afterlife wasn’t a bad way to die at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Side A Chapter 2 will explain a lot of missing context (behind like, more of what Kokichi's been told and led to believe).
> 
> Side A is more canon compliant than this in terms of events (ie Shuichi doesn't McFuckin Die), but there's certain things that were deliberately done identically between the two stories, so yeah when I get that written properly, the experience of this series will be complete.
> 
> I hope this order of upload is okay, it was definitely the correct way to WRITE it but it's hard to tell what the best order would be for the reading experience. Anyway! Thank you for reading and please look forward to Side A Chapter 2 within the next few weeks! Lots of love and as usual, comments and kudos appreciateddd


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